crusadertsar Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 Prologue: Rebirth of Lobanovsky’s “Totalitarian” Football Today most football fans associate Total Football with the Dutch super teams of 1970s or the modern Barcelona and Bayern Munich systems. Unfortunately, the name of a Ukrainian manage Valeriy Lobanovsky does not immediately spring to mind even though the term “pressing” originated in his book “Methodological Basis of the Development of Training Models”. For obvious reasons, soviet era football is not exactly a glamorous subject. Also to understand Lobanovsky’s system one must also understand the mentality of his time, which is not always easy for non-Eastern Europeans. Lobanovsky was the child of postwar Soviet Ukraine, a regime which prized above all else two things, collective accomplishment and scientific progress that arose from hard work. Individuals were not praised on their merits alone but how they worked as part of a well-oiled machine. To Lobanovsky, a football team was such a machine, made up of 22 cogs. The team had to attack together, defend together, and win together. Every player was supposed to be comfortable playing both attack and defence. Describing it in such a way, one might not see any difference from the Dutch, German or Spanish visions of Total Football. What made Lobanovsky’s “Total" Football unique is how for him it was not about controlling the ball through ball possession but about controlling the space through stretching and overloading the field. The players had to make the field larger when in possession and smaller when defending. His teams were never possession-hogs. If anything he relied more on rapid vertical counterattacks rather than on a 1000 beautiful short passes. To give an analogy that’s instantly understood by any modern follower of the beautiful game, Lobanovsky’s Soviet National Team and Dynamo Kiev were like Leicester of their time. More counterpressing than Tiki-Taka. Like any successful general who realizes that you win by controlling the field of battle first and by outnumbering the enemy second, Lobanovsky wanted his players to exploit the space to their advantage. While attacking they had to stretch the field via tireless work of fullbacks such as Luzhny and wingers like Alex Zavarov. When not in possession, the same players had to work hard to collapse back into tight 2 lines of 4 compressed around the net to give as little space for the opponents as possible. For once again, one cannot create any kind of attacking move if there is no space available for players to run into and Lobanovsky's players were already occupying that space. Yet his tactics were far from simply parking the bus and relying on anti-football. Dynamo Kiev went 3:0 against Atlético Madrid and famously trounced Barcelona in 1997 with aggregate of 7 goals while not letting a single one in. Naturally he favored the 4-4-2 shape, allowing for rapid transition from defensce to attack and vise versa. The classic 4-4-2 can collapse easily into a rigid set of 2 banks of 4 which can be near impenetrable and ruthless in regaining the ball and then rapidly moving it up to the strikers. The key here was having two quick and very creative playmaking strikers who could both create and finish their own chances. What also helped is having creative defenders who could ping long passes, bypassing the midfield, to the strikers. One might argue that his teams were so successful because of the good fortune of some extraordinary striker duos like Igor Belanov and Oleh Protasov or Rebrov and Shevchenko. But would they have been as productive in another system? What we do know is that Lobanosky was almost obsessive when it came to developing young talent and getting the most potential out of every player that passed through the youth academy. He was not one to buy a 40 goalscorer when there was already a young kid in his reserve squad that needed more game time. Stemming from his engineering academic background, Lobanovsky was a strict believer in analyzing data in a highly empirical way to improve his tactics and get the best out the players. By hiring a professor of Bioenergetics Anatoly Zelentsovin and statistician Mykhaylo Oshemko as his assistants, Lobanovsky took the idea of sports data gathering and analysis to a whole new level. Something that is taken for granted in modern football, but was revolutionary in late 1960s. With Oshemkov’s data in one hand and Zelentsov’s understanding of human physical potential in the other, he established lists of demands for each individual position on the field. Numbers and lengths of passes, completion rates, headers, numbers of shots, distances covered, possession and recycling were all optimized, quantified and turned in to a series of easily measured numerical targets. Like no one before, both on playing field and on the training ground, Lobanovsky tried to capture the elusive firefly of football as an artform and distill it into a science. After each game, Oshemkov’s data was posted in the locker room for everyone to see each player’s performance levels. There was nowhere for underperformers to hide, and no more room for selfish interest and instinct. Lobanovsky was not only one of greatest Ukrainian managers but probably the ideal Football Manager gamer long time before the advent of Championship Manager series. But what if he had a son, in a spiritual sense that is? Next: Part 1, Introducing the Club and the Manager Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrazyTacooo Posted November 25, 2018 Share Posted November 25, 2018 Hi! Thanks for the great post which dissected the style of legendary manager and made me a bit nostalgic as I witnessed iconic duo Sheva + Rebrov when I was a kid. As for me I'm also managing Dynamo right now but my main source of satisfaction in this game is Marotta-style bargain signings so I haven't produced results yet beyond what Khatskevich had produced with a team in a real life but I hope to build a great team in a long run. Regarding U21 palyers (what you've mentioned as a part of the style of Maestro Lobanovskiy) Supryaga is doing really well for my team mostly because there is a real scaricity of forwards in Dynamo and he's a talented lad that used his chance to fill that gap. Also I enjoy giving a chance to Mykolenko and Tsitiashvilli when I feel like I've secured my results. It's worth nothing though that modern Dynamo has a lot of first-squad-ready talented youngsters such as Shaparenko, Tsygankov, Burda, Shepelev, Besedin and thus is much more pleasant for an ordinary Dynamo fan than a couple years ago. Anyways I wish you good luck in your endavour and hoping to read more from you soon Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
crusadertsar Posted November 25, 2018 Author Share Posted November 25, 2018 14 minutes ago, CrazyTacooo said: Hi! Thanks for the great post which dissected the style of legendary manager and made me a bit nostalgic as I witnessed iconic duo Sheva + Rebrov when I was a kid. As for me I'm also managing Dynamo right now but my main source of satisfaction in this game is Marotta-style bargain signings so I haven't produced results yet beyond what Khatskevich had produced with a team in a real life but I hope to build a great team in a long run. Regarding U21 palyers (what you've mentioned as a part of the style of Maestro Lobanovskiy) Supryaga is doing really well for my team mostly because there is a real scaricity of forwards in Dynamo and he's a talented lad that used his chance to fill that gap. Also I enjoy giving a chance to Mykolenko and Tsitiashvilli when I feel like I've secured my results. It's worth nothing though that modern Dynamo has a lot of first-squad-ready talented youngsters such as Shaparenko, Tsygankov, Burda, Shepelev, Besedin and thus is much more pleasant for an ordinary Dynamo fan than a couple years ago. Anyways I wish you good luck in your endavour and hoping to read more from you soon Thank you for reading CrazyTacooo I'm glad that it gave you enjoyment and hopefully you will have a memorable save. Also, if you wish to read more, I actually expanded on this thread in Good Players and Team guide section of this forum: and also on a website for which I write - Dictatethegame.com - https://dictatethegame.com/2018/11/21/dynamo-project-part-3-highlighting-the-pressing-forward-in-fm19/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrazyTacooo Posted November 25, 2018 Share Posted November 25, 2018 Thanks for pointing another topic. I'll definitely report there when I've finally reach the end of the season. I'm just still here to rant a bit When I wrote that Цитата I haven't produced results yet beyond what Khatskevich had produced with a team in a real life I definitely couldn't imagine that something like this could happen IRL https://www.sofascore.com/dynamo-kyiv-oleksandria/fqbsEjk And in a game when I had a similar competition between Dynamo holding 2nd place and Oleksandriya being 3rd I've literally beaten the **** out of Oleksandriya. So I guess it's still way easier to be successful manager in a game Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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